


Fun and Fear

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21788095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "A lot of Black Ice fics seem to have Jack falling for an indifferent or cruelly amused Pitch. I am dying for a Pitch perspective fic in which he is slowly falling in love with an oblivious Jack. After the events of the movie, please (or both before and after).+Pitch doesn’t realize it himself, at least not at first.++If he does realize it, he is Not Happy.+++Jack keeps cluelessly doing things that deeply affect Pitch."Pitch runs into Jack on the roof of a haunted house attraction on Halloween night. Jack casually makes a point about fun and fear, and Pitch is not prepared for this at all.
Relationships: Jack Frost/Pitch Black
Comments: 10
Kudos: 159
Collections: Blackice Short Fics





	Fun and Fear

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 10/29/2015.

Pitch saw Jack for the first time after that disastrous Easter on the following Halloween. He hadn’t been looking for him—if he had known his path and Jack’s were going to intersect, he would have changed his course entirely. He didn’t want to run into any of the Guardians for a very long time.  
  
In fact, he would have been wiser to stay underground, to send only shadows to the surface and enjoy the fears they brought back to him, as rich and varied as the best bags of candy collected by the children on this night. But wisdom had never been Pitch’s defining quality, and he did so love Halloween. All pleasures delicately accented by terror, rational fears giving way to irrational ones—if he did not examine the feeling pulling at his center, it was easy enough to imagine that he was being called, that he was summoned, demanded, on this one night, to do what he did best. After his recent defeat, he needed that. It was his only due, and he would have it, wise or no.  
  
And so, he wandered through the shadows, collecting sweet shards of fear wherever it was to be found, with no particular path in mind, simply moving from one peak of terror and delight to the next.  
  
It was when he found a particularly rich concentration of the fear he liked best that he also found Jack Frost.  
  
Pitch solidified within a shadow between a large building and a patch of forest. He took a deep breath of the air of the last few hours of October, and smiled as the none-too-distant sounds of screams reached his ears, from within both the building and the forest. He knew this sort of place well. A dedicated haunted house and haunted forest, and scores of people lining up to be scared. Wonderful. Why, with the power of suggestion, he might manage to join the actors in the woods and be seen. Or, at least, he might be able to convince himself that he had been seen. Either way, there would be plenty of fear to go around.  
  
He was just about to move off under the trees when a bit of movement on top of the house caught his attention. Jack! What was he doing here? Was he going to try to make sure no one really got scared? That there was no feeling of danger for all the precious little children? Pitch had half a mind to go and tell him off, though that would likely end badly for him.  
  
He knew he really ought to leave. But he could tell that this was such a rich haunted house! He could stay here all night and never drink it dry.  
  
Well. If he was going to stay—if he was going to stay and remain relatively _safe_ –he had to find out what Jack was doing here. He went into the shadows of a tree and emerged beside a roof peak, near enough to shout to Jack. Jack, who was doing nothing against the festivities below. Pitch looked at him more closely. He hadn’t seen him like this before. Jack’s mouth was slightly open and curved in a smile; he leaned forward to see everything better; his eyes flickered from person to person down below without ever fixing them with any particular focus. He breathed deeply, and Pitch realized with surprise that he recognized this pose. Jack was taking in some intangible from the people here, much like Pitch took in fear.  
  
What else was here? What did Jack want, here? Pitch continued watching him as he puzzled it out. He sorted through the small store of memories he had of Jack, and soon arrived at what he thought was the answer. Fun.  
  
Pitch’s stomach lurched. If that was true, might Jack be able to understand? Could he see that maybe fear wasn’t always so awful? Would he listen to Pitch if Pitch raised the idea?  
  
Pitch crouched lower in the shadows. No. No Guardian could ever listen to such things, especially not one so new.  
  
His self-admonition failed to entirely crush his hopes, and he knew he would have to talk to Jack, and likely get beaten for his trouble to do away with such a distraction, a distraction that might alert the rabbit to his whereabouts.  
  
Before he could think better of it, he stood up and took the few steps to Jack. “Frost. I’m surprised to see you here.”  
  
Jack looked up, shaking off his near-trance, and then…then he smiled. At Pitch. For Pitch. _Oh no._ When was the last time someone had smiled at Pitch? The memory might have been lost in the tooth the fairy had knocked out for all Pitch could recall at that moment.  
  
“Why wouldn’t I be here?” Jack asked. “Everyone down there is having so much fun already, I hardly need to encourage them.”  
  
“Because they’re also getting scared,” Pitch said, immediately taking a step back. “Not that I’ve done anything already, it’s all on the mortals so far!”  
  
Jack laughed. “If I tried to throw a wet blanket over fear on Halloween, I would clearly have no idea what I was doing as a Guardian of Fun.”  
  
So, Pitch had been right about what Jack was getting from this. He ought to go now, before Halloween ended. He ought to go, and not wish that Jack would smile at him again. But then again, if he pressed on, he might find more evidence to make him discard that wish entirely.  
  
“You’ve had no problem fighting fear before,” he said dryly.  
  
Jack _did_ smile at him again. _Oh no._ This time, though, it was rather more ironic. “I don’t think I was fighting fear as an emotion, you know? I was fighting against kids losing all their important memories. I was fighting against the looming death of one of the few people who had been pleased to see me in ages, even if it was for my teeth at first. Then, I was fighting against someone who had killed my friend, tricked me with my own memories, and was specifically working to destroy my tentative new friendships and destroy kids’ hopes and dreams. So. Not actually the abstract concept of fear.”  
  
“Well, when you put it that way…” Pitch said with a frown. Then why had the boy smiled at him at all, if he knew what that could do to the being on the receiving end of a rare welcome?  
  
“If Sandy hadn’t come back, I would have killed you,” Jack said casually.  
  
“That’s…fair.” Why on Earth did that make him feel… _admiration_ …for Jack?  
  
“As it is, though, Sandy told me not to attack you if I ran into you tonight. He tried to explain some more stuff about being immortal, but all I could gather was that you get another chance. And what do you know? Here we are, and we’re having a civil conversation, even.”  
  
“I can’t imagine Sandy would want me talking to you like this,” Pitch said. He sat down on the roof and looked out over the forest, full of delighted screams. Compared to the distances between celestial objects, he and Jack were right next to each other.  
  
“Well, he must have realized it was a possibility,” Jack said with a shrug. “And why not?”  
  
Pitch didn’t even want to try to explain. It probably wasn’t possible either, since Jack had been a human so recently and Pitch had been wearing this human-shaped form for so long he breathed even when he wasn’t talking.  
  
Luckily, Jack seemed to think that his question was purely rhetorical, because he went on. “Anyway, I’m sort of surprised you consistently come out on Halloween. Not because of the holiday itself, that makes perfect sense, but if you were familiar with all this,” he gestures to everything below them, “then why’d you try to appeal to me with the idea of cold and dark going together? Was that all I seemed to you, then? Just cold? I mean, here it’s clear that fear and fun go together just as well.”  
  
Oh, yes. Very clear. “I’ll keep that in mind,” Pitch said, trying to sound as if the idea of any further thought on the subject was ridiculous. And it was, but he was definitely going to dwell on it, anyway. More than he should. More than he wanted to. The thought would fill his once mostly-peaceful solitude. Ghastly. He ought to avoid that for as long as he can. He ought to stay here. There’s plenty of fear, little silence. Jack talking was far more welcome than the alternative.  
  
Jack laughed again. That was even more welcome, _oh no_. “Guess we should stay here and soak up what’s ours, then” Jack said. “That is, unless you want to give another monologue.”  
  
“Heaven forbid,” muttered Pitch, which earned him another laugh. As well it should. Who knew how much of a fool he’d make of himself if he started to make some sort of “join me!” proposal right now? Pitch grimaces. Well. If he kept his mouth shut, he might be able to survive this Halloween without too much humiliation. As for the year till next Halloween…Pitch took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, glad he had the lungs to do so.


End file.
